The Wizards Have Spoken, And These Florida Gators Are Suddenly Somebody
By Buddy Martin
Somewhere in Gainesville there’s a whistle with teeth marks in it. It belongs to Jon Sumrall, and it’s the only thing in Florida football that has taken a beating lately.
Think back to where we were a month ago. If you’d said in August that the Gators would go into the first weekend of October ranked No. 8, with the ESPN wizards giving them a 61 percent chance of making the College Football Playoff if they win at Missouri, people would have checked you for heatstroke. Somebody would have taken your car keys.
This was supposed to be a rebuilding year with a first-year coach. The pundits were picking against Florida and the locals weren’t doing much better. For two weeks the Gators couldn’t even get a vote in the polls. They were unranked and mostly ignored.
Now look at them.
Florida has played two SEC games and won both by a combined 29 points. One of those was not a close call against a so-so team. It was a dismantling of a then-No. 4 Ole Miss team at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Not an upset. A dismantling. Those two words don’t mean the same thing.
So the computer, which is never wrong until it is, says beat Mizzou on Saturday at 3:30 and you’re better than a coin flip to make the playoff. Sixty-one percent. In August, Florida’s odds of a playoff spot were roughly the same as finding a parking space at The Swamp on game day.
And it’s not just the Gator faithful, who would vote for a ham sandwich if it had a jersey on. Josh Pate is talking about it too, and he’s about as neutral as they come. He’s not just treating Florida as a playoff team. He’s treating them as a team with a real shot at the whole thing.
National championship. Shhhhh! Say it slowly. Then go lie down.
Yes, it’s early. Sumrall would be the first to tell you, probably while chewing on what’s left of that whistle. But this sport doesn’t move in slow seasons anymore. Between the portal, the expanded playoff and the fact that the old powers seem to lose to somebody every Saturday, things change fast. A team that nobody ranked in September can be talking about January by October. Welcome to the new world, where things move at warp speed.
The Disrespect Gets Used Up
Here’s the funny part. Sumrall built this thing on grievance, and grievance is starting to run low.
For four games he motivated his team the old way: by reading them everything nobody believed about them. National media picked against them, the hometown press picked against them, and they spent two weeks with no number next to their name. Sumrall used every slight like he was stocking up for a hurricane.
It worked. It worked a little too well.
Now Florida has a top-10 ranking, a playoff percentage, and Josh Pate in its corner. Where does a coach find disrespect when people are complimenting his team? It’s hard to play the underdog when the oddsmakers keep moving you to the front of the line.
My guess is that Sumrall will go back to his other favorite theme: we have a lot to fix. He’s not wrong. Florida hasn’t been perfect. But a team that wins two SEC games by 29 points while still having “a lot to fix” is the kind of problem other coaches would love to have.
Why Columbia Matters
That’s why Saturday is a real test. Missouri is ranked No. 25 and playing at home, and it’s exactly the kind of game a team that has started believing its press clippings tends to lose. It comes one week after the biggest win of the young Sumrall era, on the road, against a team that would love to be the next story at Florida’s expense.
Win it, and the Ole Miss game stops looking like a lucky Saturday. It starts looking like the beginning of something real. The 61 percent becomes something people take seriously, and Florida goes from a nice story to a serious contender.
Lose it, and everybody who picked against them in August goes right back to saying they were right all along.
So that’s where we are. Five weeks ago the question was whether Florida could get to a bowl game. Now the question is whether Sumrall can find something to be mad about.
He’ll find something. He always does. Just buy the man a new whistle.
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